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RMAC Meeting Report for January 2009 |
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Friday, 06 February 2009 10:03 |
RMAC/NRLN Health Care Advisory Committee (HCAC) Meeting Report for January 23rd 2009
Attendees:
John Kotson—IBM Retiree; RMAC Chairman
Hazel Floyd—AUSWR Regional Vice President; HCAC Member
Ed Bettinardi—Johns Manville Retiree; HCAC Chairman
Barbara Wilcox—AUSWR Health Care Specialist; HCAC Member
Joe Halpern—AUSWR CO/WY President
John Rommelfanger—AUSWR Member
Helen Domaratz—IBM Employee; Alliance@IBM/CWA Representative
The RMAC/HCAC was pleased to welcome John Rommelfanger as a new member who will interface with Congressman Jared Polis staff. Helen Domaratz returns as a representative of the Alliance@IBM/CWA and will assist John in working with Congressman Polis’ staff.
National
1. Discussion of NRLN Leadership Conference
a. NRLN is trying to raise money for lobbying and writing legislation; Goal is $125,000. Recognizes that it must pay a professional group to write legislative white papers.
b. Leadership has backed off of primarily supporting only the Maintenance of Cost Proposal (MCP). Support is increasing for Medicare reforms. These include Medicare catastrophic coverage, buy-in for retirees under age 65 and negotiating bulk prescription drug prices.
c. Dr. John McDonough, Senior Adviser for Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of senate HELP committee, listed 6 health care reform objectives; did not include anything on Medicare. Stated that everyone must be covered; coverage will be mandatory.
d. Ed Bettinardi gave presentation on MCP, Medicare catastrophic coverage, and drug importation/re-importation. One person was adamant that more attention be given to corporate health care. The complete presentation is on the NRLN website.
2. Definition of committees involved in writing health care reform legislation reported by Ed Bettinardi, HCAC chairman
a. Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) and Senate Finance committees will be the lead. Others will be involved.
b. Senators Baucus, Kennedy, Grassley, Enzi, Rockefeller, Hatch and Dodd have agreed to cooperate on health care; “believe there should be comprehensive health care reform that includes access to effective coverage, quality care for all and measures to control rising costs. Intend to work together toward quality, affordable health caverage and care for every American”.
c. As soon as legislation surfaces, the HCAC must analyze to see what it does for retirees.
d. Senator Mike Enzi and others are adamant that legislation must include corporate health care and insurance companies.
e. Consensus is that Medicare Advantage programs will disappear.
3. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study on Medicare reforms
a. Study recommends combining Medicare A&B deductibles, increasing the yearly deductible and adding catastrophic coverage.
b. HCAC thinks it is a good approach to improving Medicare. It also saves substantial money.
c. Ed Bettinardi asked NRLN to find out who on the CBO did the study. He believes it was initiated by a conversation between then Senator Obama and Dr. Orszag head of the CBO last year. When we find out, HCAC should work with the person that did the study.
4. Comparison of Senate bills S.80 and S. 242; legislation for prescription drug importation/re-importation; requested by NRLN
a. If, Senate bill S.242 is re-introduced, NRLN should continue to support it. S.80 is less comprehensive.
b. CBO analysis performed in 2004 indicates that only a modest savings would be achieved through drug importation; none through re-importation.
c. HCAC believes NRLN should forget about drug importation/re-importation and shift emphasis to legislation permitting Medicare to negotiate bulk drug prices. Ed Bettinardi’s letter to NRLN on this subject is included as attachment to this report.
Colorado/Wyoming
1. Interface with Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi’s staff—John Kotson, Hazel Floyd
a. Senator Enzi is on the Senate HELP committee; he is in a position to help with Medicare reforms. However, his main thrust has been health care mechanization which is included in President Obama’s stimulus package.
b. John Kotson has written to Greg Dean, Senator Enzi’s health care person, 3 times concerning Medicare catastrophic coverage with no response.
c. John will write a letter to Senator Enzi; Hazel will forward it to the Senator’s Cheyenne office and request a reply.
2. Status of contacts with Colorado Representatives
a. Senator Mike Bennet—Hazel Floyd stated that Senator Bennet would retain Senator Salazar’s staff. Betty Sweeney, the community liaison staff person, will be invited to the next monthly meeting.
b. Senator Mark Udall—Hazel Floyd stated that Jack Waldorf, Senator Udall’s staff person, will attend our next meeting. We will ask Jack to set up a video teleconference meeting in the local office with Udall’s Washington staff.
c. Congresswoman Betsy Markey—John Kotson has E-mailed her 3 times, but has not received a response. He will attempt to find her Fort Collins office and establish contact.
d. Congressman Jared Polis—John Rommelfanger and Helen Domaratz will attend an open house hosted by the congressman. They will initiate talks on 3 subjects; Medicare catastrophic care, negotiating bulk drug discounts and offering Medicare insurance to retirees under 65. They will invite him to send a staff person to our meetings.
e. Congressman Ed Perlmutter—Jerry Pifer, his community liaison person, will attend our next meeting. Jerry has promised to provide feedback on the Medicare white paper.
f. Congressman Mike Coffman—Ed Betinardi will visit the congressman’s office and initiate contact.
g. Congresswoman Dianna DeGette—Congresswoman DeGette is the key person to getting anything accomplished on Medicare reforms since she is chairperson for the Health and Human Services (HHS) committee. Barbara Wilcox will assist Harvey Hoffman in setting up a meeting with the congresswoman.
h. Congressman John Salazar—Hazel Floyd will contact Duane Watford in Grand Junction and Jane Grey in Pueblo to have copies of our white paper on Medicare catastrophic coverage delivered.
3. Meeting with HP/AGILENT Retirees Association—John Kotson will give a presentation on Medicare catastrophic coverage at their next meeting on February 5th. The meeting will be held at Johnson’s Corners at 1:00 PM for anyone wishing to attend.
4. It has been noted that CARA meetings are not well attended recently. Also, RMAC has been unable to consistently have a CARA representative at our recent meetings.
The next RMAC/Health Care Advisory Committee meeting will be held on February 27th 2009. A hearty thanks to all that attended this meeting. A lot of information was distributed and key decisions were made.
John Kotson; RMAC Chairman
Attachment: Ed Bettinardi’s letter to NRLN on comparison of Senate bills S.80 and S.242 performed by the Health Care Advisory Committee
The Health Care Advisory Committee reviewed Vitter's bill, S-80 and made an attempt to compare it with S 242 from the 110th Congress and the NRLN currently supported bill.
Both bills cover very similar material and use a significant amount of identical wording but are very different in size, with S80 at 13 pages and S242 at 42 pages. However, since the two bills are structured completely differently, what appears in a specific section of one bill may be in a completely different section of the other bill, or scattered in various locations. As a result, it is virtually impossible to say how the two bills compare.
For Vitter, our questions would be these: Why and how is this bill different from S242? Can you explain why S 80 is a better bill than S 242?
S 242 had significant co-sponsorship and appears to cover everything including re-importation, which we are not sure if S 80 does cover. Our reaction is to stick with S 242/HR 380 and see if Dorgan can re-introduce it in the 111th Congress.
As an aside, we did discover a CBO analysis on drug importation done in 2004 entitled "Would Prescription Drug Importation Reduce U.S. Drug Spending?" The conclusion of that study is as follows:
On the basis of its evaluation of proposals to date, CBO has concluded that permitting the importation of foreign-distributed prescription drugs would produce at most a modest reduction in prescription drug spending in the United States. H.R. 2427, for example, which would have permitted importation from a broad set of industrialized countries, was estimated to reduce total drug spending by $40 billion over 10 years, or by about 1 percent. Permitting importation only from Canada would produce a negligible reduction in drug spending.
The whole study is here: http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/54xx/doc5406/04-29-PrescriptionDrugs.pdf
Based on this study, might NRLN be better off spending effort on Medicare Prescription Drug Price negotiation, rather than pursuing a subject which seems to have little benefit, and has been introduced now into 3 Congresses without going anywhere?
Ed/HCAC
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RMAC Meeting Reports and Correspondence